


A Meeting of (Un)like Minds

by dropout_ninja



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game), Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Eldritch, Experimental Style, First Contact, Neither really knows what the other is, Possessive Behavior, Post-Season/Series 03, The Entity is an asshole as well, The Mindflayer is an asshole, Theorizing, Though they're making theories, To either ST or DBD, Undetailed Violence, Unreliable Narrator, language barriers, probably not canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:27:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24859888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dropout_ninja/pseuds/dropout_ninja
Summary: A crossing of paths.  A meeting of ancients.   A clash of strengths.or: wherein the Mindflayer, while dormant and recovering from the latest battle against its human possessions, runs across a being as powerful as itself- and the Entity has the search for new game players interrupted by a shadow being.
Kudos: 13





	A Meeting of (Un)like Minds

**Author's Note:**

> Stranger Things & Dead By Daylight and their characters do not belong to me. All rights go to their respective owners.  
> The Entity is mostly bared for our theorizing, so that's really what this is: a bit of an exploration of two very vague characters. In following the IT expy that the Entity seems to be (feeding on fear, spider limbs, etc), parts of its presented form here will be shout-outs to Stephen King's ITs final/true form (a female spider). Because of that and the use of "Entité" in French (a female noun, but one only used because the French language has no gender-neutral 'its' equivalent), the POV will switch to calling it her. This was mainly done to distinguish it from the Mindflayer, as having both be referred to as "it" would likely run into some undue readability issues.  
> Information of the Entity's abilities comes from the DBD wiki and tv tropes both. In short, its established that the Entity has: Chronokinesis, Dimensional Travel, Immortality (Longevity), Invulnerability: (Seemingly), Mind Control, Necromancy, Power Bestowal, Psionics, Reality Warping, Telepathy, and Teleportation. Most of these will be referenced inside this oneshot.  
> This is unbeta'd, so there will most likely be a few grammar/spelling errors that slip past and will be edited out over the weeks. The writing style is intentionally fluid but if any parts are too fluid (ie confusing) just drop a note for me and I'll work on editing it.  
> ST canon wise, this would be occurring sometime after season 3. This was chosen because 1) the demogorgan taken for DBD's 'chained monster' skin seems to imply it could be one of those caged by the Russians 2) Steve's Scoops Ahoy outfit implies he has undergone or at least began S3 when nabbed.  
> I'm more familiar with ST than DBD, but I have watched/played both and did try to read up on relevant lore before writing this. So far as I could see, both the Entity and the Mindflayer really are just very vague and open to interpretation.

Its entire realm was an intimate nest of living material tied back into its own mind. The realm was no web, no structure, no living creature; the realm was merely _its_ and it _was_ its realm.

When something encroached on this realm, it felt the motion. It felt the presence and measured its strength. It listened to invitation and accepted.

It could not usher one itself. There were realities outside the mesh it had formed for its own interests, but it could not touch them. It waited for another to touch this shadow creation of its. 

Only sojourners could. Those that could wander, those that could search and travel. The humans it sought would call these sojourners 'fleas'. They would call that separation a tightrope and the spaces on either side were worlds, realms, untouchable by all but those fleas.

Its world was trapped on one side of a tightrope. An analogy found in the mind of its first native from the current other side. Will, Will, little vivid Will. A trophied prize of a now-dead scout turned into its own spy. It was there that it found those other human's explanation on the gateway. Despite its crude terms and irrevocably indelicate bluntness, the analogy _did_ work. And so it saw what side of the drawing it lay on; that side with a simplistic figure, bound to its place beyond one side of a rope. It was a location that could travel across many alternative sides beyond- but without a sojourner, there was no piercing through that barrier. As strong as it was, it could only hold and stretch a gateway open rather than open one itself. It could not reach a world without first having a sojourner introduce it.

Now (it knew as it felt over the nerve-riddled fog and the presence flicking in and out through shadowed forests and blanker areas, leaving behind a web of thorns that seemed to trap in vines and air and sour into feeding material) it saw that this creature, this invader, encroaching without warning on its realm was a sojourner in that regard. There was no other reason for its ability to tear through the barrier and slip inside a world it did not naturally belong in. Yet it was no mere scout, no mere visitor. It was too powerful for that. It had never felt something with a power like this new being resonated. This thing, this alien mind, seemed akin to its own level of existence. A level above all others it had ever seen sojourning or consumed.

There was undeniable fascination there.

And there was an anger at the intrusion. An anger born of the blatant, yes, but built of a fear out of a strong unknown and a disgust at this thing's ability to wander when it was trapped without a sojourner.

It was impotence that left it with nothing but time to wait and roil in growing anger from that frustration.

The thing was searching through its realm without giving attention to the world's master. It put a stop to the lackadaisical wander. With its storm near behind, it pulled out from its dormancy (the latest scuffle with the human world had cut and burned a portion of its shade away and such an injury deserved recovery) and found the visiting entity quickly.

There was seemingly nothing but limbs in that fog until it descended down to loom over the alien. Then a feasible shape twisted into place. It was madness: limbs, lights, thorns, growths. Each long appendage was grown over with thorns; buds seemed to tip half of the spiny growths and golden red lights ran down under the carapace. They each ended in a long, sharpened point. It would hardly do damage to its own frame of shadows or the mind behind that construct. It seemed just as likely that its own shadows and storm would do nothing to truly damage a body constructed merely for its benefit.

Neither needed feasibility and neither had limitations on those feasible forms that built around their comprehension and creativity. 

There was no introduction. It needed answers. The entity was an unknown; its needs a mystery and, other than for the sake of curiosity, unimportant. 

So it scanned the presented body for something that would allow it access to all of those answers; to both those answers and the gateway functions a sojourner of this strength could offer it. All it needed was an opening. The most recent creatures, humans, had used mouths for their necessary anatomical functioning. Whether through its own limbs or those of a proxy made of flesh, it would always slip in and reach through an opening to pry at the mind hidden inside and lay it bare for investigation and possession.

There was no opening offered. There was nothing recognizable. It was left only to seek for comparisons to that which it had seen in its eternal life amongst its realm and those that had invited it. So it named a limb a limb, a thorn a thorn, and so on. They were the closest tags and it would dissect this disrespecting visitor with any information it had regardless of its barely applicable equivalencies. 

It reached. Its presence loomed closer. Mental tendrils sought something, anything, of note, of familiarity. They brushed up against the web of a mind alien to it. The thing turned to slip away again. It had exerted enough pressure to send its convoluted body against the ground and hold it there. No. There would be no slipping away yet. There would be none until it received its answers as to this invasion and found a way to send a splinter shade to ride in this thing's webbed mind. 

The entity on the ground twisted and slid against its pressure, turning and forcing its way upward. Legs clacked together. Clawed points slid into vines and soft ground. Carapace dragged against the ground.

Hostility was evident.

It was almost surprised it had taken so long to envelop the situation.

They clashed then. Tendrils met with elongated claws. Shadows without form tried to strangle the many jointed clench of corroded limbs. There were forms beyond, yes, but they were hardly feasible. They clashed but neither had true advantage over the other and neither hurt the energy that hid inside the representations. 

So they reared back. Took the other in. It looked over the hideous thing the lay stabbing its limbs into the vines of _its world_ and leaving them to twist in pain. 

And hideous it was. Bloated, somewhere beyond all those limbs everywhere around it; bloated and stretched and yet carapace lay loose and hung among the bloat. A physical representation of starvation or hunger- one much like its own scouts wore. The thicker areas spoke of gluttony or else a fill of larvae. Perhaps it could only find representations from its own populace or those sojourners it had seen- it could admit to its own limitations in the matter- but they still spread out into a picture of its own. Those human larva had let it see a certain value to pictures and analogies. As inferior as the method was, it wasn't useless. It could admit to uses found from other creatures, realms, minds. It rather enjoyed a taste for that, in fact. A collective intelligence could grow with every new insight and, with each insight, open more of the world's mysteries apart for it to flay. 

This entity had nothing it had seen before from its first clashing. Still, it had imagery and flashes of its presence and the whisper of some alien speech- and _that_. _That_ it could dissect until some brief answer lay ready to understand. _That_ it would dissect until this creature was something bared for understanding.

So it would analyze every allusion offered.

It was large: powerful.

Its presence was shrouded in fog: all-encompassing. The rest of its manifestations seemed just that: meant to allude to a quality, to a thought. The presence of nerves and sensations seemed to tie into the fog moreso than this creature of twisted limbs and madness it presented as. This mist, this shroud, _was_ its true feasibility. As its own chosen feasibility was shadows of this world and any others a sojourner invited it into, it could grasp at the presence this mist encompassed- at the existence of a creature made of nothing touchable at all.

It had many limbs, moreso than the fifteen it typically manifested and reached with: reaching. A representation of its ability to sojourn and its reach for prey both? 

It was covered with growths and corrosives: a mystery, unfortunately. It had no analogy for that. A being of life as well as corruption, poison, perhaps? There could only be reaching there.

Its carapace hung loose in spots, showed endoskeleton below, aching for fill: hunger. Hunger even now, most likely. Even when such hunger ought to be dormant, as its energy was not close to dying. There, it could relate. 

It still let other carapace drag down, rolling, slowly, so sickeningly organic, in a show of both fill (the power of holding food, so much, all in reach and satisfied) and perhaps of descendants: prideful. Pridefully showcasing its own assets and stability in fighting starvation to the point of gluttonous feasting when there was no need. Pridefully showing its capability to spread again: kill the one, watch for those children that were not even known to exist. A misread, perhaps. Perhaps they had all been. But there were the eggs and batch-layers of this realm. Eggs feasted on by its scouts. Scouts that dragged prey to nests to fill the body cavities with larva. A propagation it could not replicate so organically, but one it could through its many tools and the consumed it could reach; so too, it seemed likely, this entity could not spread its-her-descendants through such organic means. And so too did that not prevent it-her from the capability to return in form even after this metaphorical creature it-she presented itself-herself as seemed to die. 

Such pride. Such confidence in unshakability. 

Such a pride and confidence it too shared.

And there was a paradox therein.

For one to believe so thoroughly in their own inevitability, one must have no rivals in strength.

It reared again, moving to drag its opponent into the center of its storm and let it burn there. Burning was its greatest weapon. Such a weapon seared any living or non-living thing inside this realm to agony (itself included, though its storm was contained and could not harm it). With similarities established, there was the unlikely possibility weaknesses would add into the growing catalogue. 

The entity squealed inside the raging storm. It expanded outside, preened. It shared its own pleasure at the entity's pain, let it ring out over the air and minds of any nearby in hope that its rumbling pride could roll through this creature too. 

The squeal rang loud, turned inside on itself, peeling the inside out like lips that mocked its whispers out in breath. 

It, she, teleported in part, crawled in part- left the storm to rage on empty air and instead prowl around its shadows. Those breathy whispers continued to carve at it with every pass of its clacking claws, fat body dragging, skinny joints and many necks cracking; the whispers were alien and- loathe as it was to admit so- it could not resonate. They clashed in forms, in energy, in words. They were not made of those substances natural to their native realms and thus could hardly even come across as comprehensible even to such similarly powerful beings as each both were. 

Still, both had ceased their feasible tousle to pry at the minds behind. It seemed a joint decision. Instigated, yes, by the entity, but one that it had tried before when searching for a maw or mouth to pry inside and find a physical cognitive location from. 

They could not so easily use their branches of telepathy on each other, but a slower approach let thoughts- however alien, however strange- and pressure (on its part) and whispers (on hers) slip through. 

It sought an explanation for this creature's presence in its world. It sought a mental tie to a gateway that it could copy and then hold apart for its own use. It sought for any signs of the familiar world it wanted to return to, the place where the last sojourner had tried to taunt and win and then somehow did. 

She sought nothing of the like. Her interest was in the scouts. Behind the scouts, then those humans who had contested its entry to their realm thrice now. Two. She wanted two. Just two. It hardly was rational. 

Their exchange continued. It watched whispers floating by with part curiosity and part revulsion. They held a power to them, but it could not comprehend what it may be. That power simply did not apply to it. So it felt they carried power and received no taste of that itself to test and wonder on and fight against. Had it not been a result of two alien entities clashing without ever facing the option to truly see the other, it would have felt more insulted. Still, she crawled into its mind with these whispers and dropped their poison to drag pointlessly across barriers and branches until its patience wore thin. The entity had found her answers. It had watched her dig them up while it itself stayed focused on what gibberish it saw in the alien mind before it. She had seen its scouts and their vicious prowess. She had seen two of the humans (two that it had truly never found interest in, despite one's brief visit to its realm allowing a panning of her frantic mind) and seemingly grown satisfied with their fight against its first scout to the human world. 

But she had offered no reason for her satisfaction, no reason for her interest in the first place, and absolutely no reason for her sudden presence in its territory.

It drove into the entity's cognitive field for its own answers. Pressure tore down, ripping at alien mental corridors, tearing open images of a contained realm of hunts and feeding and fear. The entity rippled at the pressure but either had no defense against it or else allowed the barrage. Its pride was great enough that it did not long consider the latter as an option.

Through images and gradually translating whispers and flashes of her hunger satiated by a game she ran, one that fed hunger for sacrifices and meals and the controlling of minds in ways so similar to its own thriving, it understood why she had come here to see the creatures of its realm.

This entity would take its scouts? Its scouts and then depart, dissipate, alleviate her awful rivaling presence in its world, to return to whatever realm she dragged her bloated form from?

And what? 

Pass it up?

A true challenger?

It thought not. 

Another surge of purposeful pressure carved the thought across her mind. The entity laxed on the ground of its realm even as her mind ran poisonous whispers along the prongs of its angry mental limbs responsible. 

_I Will._ There was a flash along the creature's many presented legs. A flash of golden growth, that corrosion, spreading under thin appendages and leaving behind a new wake of thorns. 

Would she?

It did not know that it would fight the entity's departure. It was better to have such a rival gone. Their own inability to comprehend and meld only added to what was likely a mutual distaste of the other's presence. Still, those were _its scouts_ and _its human prey_ and _its world_ that she planned on stealing and entering. 

For a being that could not sojourn on its own, it found that fact infuriating. 

So no: she could not leave so easily. Not without a bargain, a price, something for it to enjoy; the human world would be enough. Almost enough. It was possessive of all of its scouts. It was possessive of its enemies and its entertainment and its spies. It would not let three be stolen from it without gaining something in return.

Something more satisfying than the company of this abomination, it thought purposefully. The entity roiled as if hacking, colors blooming once again. Mirth, if it could guess again. She was amused by its thoughts. 

_No._

Oh?

It prepared to clash again. 

It prepared to tear down the feasible construct and mute those whispers and let its lifebloods stream over a bared mind easily marked and taken and added to a collective of all those others it possessed.

And why would this sojourner not? it thought again, amused as well in the inconceivability of such a stupid pretense at a deal. Why would this sojourner not mark a true opponent and leave an everlasting game lacking in creativity and dulled by mortal participants in order to fight a fellow ancient? Why would she not come for a creature of its magnitude and take it to play her little game, to make it interesting rather than dull and repetitive?

As entertaining as the scouts were to watch fight and mutilate the batch-layers, their repetition and dull minds let the act lose its excitement long ago. Its recent fight with the human sojourner had sparked life in a dormant being. It had awoken with the sensation of a true clash and then began its efforts: to learn these humans languages and thoughts, to slip inside their minds, to turn their collective against the psychic and make her watch it all. A victory. A lesson to its possessions. One that would leave them as empty as its scouts and subjects, in time. Leave them boring and dull to watch devour each other.

This creature would not break so easily as mortal prey did.

This creature insulted its pride and then thought to leave without the slightest reparation.

This creature was one so unlike itself and yet- on that level- so much a being like itself. The human sojourner was hardly on that level. Nothing before had been. There could have been realms, realities, worlds with creatures of its magnitude and this entity was just the first taste of many. A higher functioning could have been found. 

And still she saw herself content with leaving it in this realm with no gate and three fewer possessions, just so she could play with her boring mortal toys. 

_Because I Am Satisfied With My Game And I Have No Time To Humor Yours,_ she answered the questions it had thought rhetorical incorrectly.

It would make her rue that. It would show how deadly serious the vitriol it felt was. There was no game at play. There never was. It took insult to equate to lifelong vendettas. A single sojourner had so recently closed a gate upon it and forced it to wait for other humans to pry the doorway open so that it could stretch its way in again. It was a humiliating defeat. It was a disgusting reliance on inferior creatures to grant it a piercing through the tightrope. 

There was a fog around the entity now. She slipped inside a substance its shadows could not meld with and then her presence was gone. It reached to its limit- scrabbling at small tears left on the human homeworld by those who had stolen its scouts and fed their fellow humans to them. There, it could sense her. It could feel that fog slip over a scout and then it was gone.

Unreachable.

Dissipated. 

Cut off. 

_Its_ scout. Its, its, _its-_ a possessive, a possession it owned and breathed and lived through. The teleporting occurred again, slipping through space and time itself to carry one of the humans away. Again, she slipped in and stole the third; simultaneously to the scout and the first of the humans because the creature had no constraints to time. What an enviable control to have. Time. It needed a way to twist that itself. There was no doubt such a motion would be indubitably useful. There was much that the creature had that it would want itself. They both fed on minds. They both could play with those minds- twisting, erasing, writing new memories, or just controlling plainly. They both lived in realms of their shape and desire. Yet one could leave without help while the other could not. One could leave and take another's possessions with her. 

How detestable.

How absolutely enraging.

The entity was gone. Gone, like a thief, her prizes taken with her.

It reached again for those tears in the human world, constantly shutting themselves through the work of human ingenuity. It would tear through even if its dormancy had not recovered full strength. 

It would tear through everything until its new object of ire was once again accessible and it could take back not just what was its, but steal the very world of this being so on level with itself from her. 

By approaching it, she had ushered the first invitation.

It had never once turned an invitation down. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for your time! If you noticed any grammar/spelling errors, feel free to point them out so I can correct them. Lastly, please drop a thought or two if you are so inclined :)


End file.
